Passion (11 page)

Uncaring if it was all in her mind or no, she
husked, “I’m regretful about what I said, Raith. I’m achingly sorry
about your Suzette.”

His eyes turned a darker pitch. The sinew
seemed to shrink on the fierce bones of his face. Yet he merely
nodded abrupt before he reminded her, “When the time comes, you
must flee as soon as I am inside the house.”

“I know what to do.”

His hand dropped from her wrist. He
straightened and took the cloak, holding it for her to slip
into.

Facing him, whilst he pulled the hood over
her hair, Gabriella gazed upwards. “You’ll keep your promise, won’t
you? About my mother, if anything goes wrong.”

“It won’t—go wrong.” He took her by the
shoulders, his hold more forceful than his voice. “So long as you
do exactly as we planned.”

Gabriella nodded. Her gaze skimmed his face.
She dared to raise her fingertips to touch his sinewy cheek. “Be
careful…I…Just please…take care, Raith.”

“It matters not what happens to me, in that
final meeting, so long as he is dead a second before I breathe my
last.”

“It matters….” Her lips trembled but she
could not finish. Since she felt her emotions surfacing, Gabriella
turned swiftly and strode, almost ran, outside before she made a
fool of herself.

Back in the hack, she felt her eyes sting and
had to drive the heel of her hands against them to suppress tears.
It was fatigue. The strain.

Yet, even as she slipped back inside and
stripped, crawling into the bed she loathed, in the house of the
man she loathed—she grew a little more queasy, a little panicked in
the deepest pit of her stomach—at the reminder that ending their
pact over Stratton, would also be the end of their relationship
too. She may never see Raith again.

In her worse thoughts, Gabriella feared Raith
would destroy himself deliberately. He lived only for vengeance,
and lived with the ghost of Suzette—sought it, breathed it, needed
it. She knew him well enough to discern it kept him alive when all
the rest of him died too.

Finally letting slumber carry her out of the
strains of reality, Gabriella found a few stingy hours of
peace.

* * * *

Raith stood amid the swirling fog, his high
coat collar flipped up, watching the dark shapes as the last of the
barges pushed off from shore. When he could see them no more, he
turned, keeping to deep shadows. He made his way to Fleet Street.
There, he took rear stairs at a narrow building and knocked on the
door of the garret. An elder man opened it, holding a sputtering
candle.

With few words exchanged, Raith handed him a
sack of coins, advising, “There’s a ship for the Indies leaving in
the hour, and I’d suggest you board it.”

“I intend to, milord. I have no use for the
deed. You’ll find it under the floor boards there.” His head nodded
toward a corner.

Tossing him extra coin, Raith left shortly
after carrying several wrapped bundles. Yet another hour later,
businesses, and doors on several streets had leaflets stuck in the
cracks or slid under the bottom. In the better addresses, he left
them the same, and addition, in parks, as well as under the doors
of the clubs, coffeehouses, and shops.

The fog was soupy, thicker, when
empty-handed, he stood gazing up at the back of Stratton’s
residence. Reaching in his coat for his flask, he drank deep, once,
twice, wiping his mouth with his fist as the emotions began to grip
him. All the years of planning, waiting, was for this. Soon. Very
soon.

Despite the pre morning chill, a bead of
sweat ran down his temple and more mingled with foggy dampness on
his hair. He finished the flask, the whiskey burning through his
blood with every heartbeat.

Seeing a faint light in one of the windows of
the second floor, Raith’s guts tensed. Was she in that little room
she called a box? Was Stratton abusing her?

Other, clearer images came, swimming within
the intoxication from the whiskey, the corpse bloated and
muddy…brown eyes…no. He shook his head, Suzette’s eyes were not
brown, Gabriella’s were. The hair flowing outward and matted with
debris…black with burgundy lights….

Bloody hell. Raith felt a wave of dizzy heat.
His mind’s eye warping an image of semi full red lips, of a woman
lying on a bed, first Gabriella, then Suzette’s body, then
Gabriella began to transform, to take on an ashen hue. Her skin
swelled, blackened, and burst.

“Christ.” He swiped his hand over his face to
clear his head and banish those awful sights. The worst kept coming
until he turned, groping for something to steady himself, the
whiskey rising from his gut upwards. Finally, his hand grasped
solid surface, but the spew erupted from his lips. Shuddering,
moaning, Raith eased down on his haunches, heaving violently, until
nothing remained in his stomach.

This never happened. Never had he confused
the two. The dirty, thin, waif, he took in off the streets. The
hollow and yet steel eyed young girl who he fed and clothed, who
absorbed his instructions like a sponge. There was no confusing the
two. Suzette was fair, small and wispy, an innocent Rector’s
daughter with no knowledge of the world, no concept of evil save
what her father taught in scripture. Suzette was pure and trusting.
Gabriella was… she was wounded, bruised, and alone, but sharp,
cynical, determined.

Sweat issued through his pores. His hand
trembled wiping it away. Taking a moment to lean forward, he
pressed his forehead against the cool object under his hand, having
a brief, merciful respite. Floating, as a kind of fever took him,
he saw Gabriella in a crimson gown, her hair tumbled over her
shoulders, and head back in abandon, her hand between her creamy
thighs. He saw himself as he sat in the shadows, forgetting to
speak, robbed of it, both loathing himself and helpless in that
moment. Betraying Suzette in a moment he had forgotten to shut
down, helpless to do so. His body had come alive for the first time
in years, his heartbeat, his loins warmed and thickened. Moreover,
he saw beauty, passion, and life— instead of death.

He tried to blot out her deep creamy skin and
round curves, the large coral nipples that had firmed under the
amber lamplight. The sight of her thighs, milky, soft, parted—and
the sounds he knew she’d picked up from their ventures out at the
brothels and exhibitions. Worse yet, he tried to blot out the image
of her not acting, but sitting on her bed, no more the waif, but a
woman grown, exotic, with that something more in her brandy eyes
that tried to pierce places in him he refused to allow.

It was all merged and mingled, the years, the
thousands of hours, when the world was just the two of them on
their quest, their mission. He told himself he was cold blooded
without apology. He was giving her what she wanted too. Had she
gone after Stratton on her own, she would be dead already.

He was fixed on his purpose, his goal, and
there was no ulterior motive toward Gabriella. They were clear
about the ends they worked toward.

Raith squeezed his eyes tight, tighter, until
that erotic image vanished. He used the same tool he always did,
Suzette in death, to make it vanish.

It left him chilled.

He fumbled for his handkerchief and wiped his
face and mouth. Standing, drawing in several breaths, he turned his
back from the building, and lit a cheroot, savoring a bitter taste,
cupping the lit end, before turning again, letting his shoulder
lean against the iron post.

He drew in, letting the smoke inside like
wraiths and ghosts amid the fog. He could not forget. He could not
think of Gabriella as anything or anyone outside his own need of
her assistance. If he let himself imagine…as when he’d spied those
marks on her shoulders, he’d think of what he’d made her, what role
he’d written for her to play—trained her for. He would not trade
one woman for the other. He would be giving up the only thing he
lived for.

Suzette deserved revenge.

Gabriella wanted this as much as he, for her
own retribution. She had known the danger and agreed. She was in
control and knew how much risk to take, and how to protect
herself—

If Raith did not tell himself this, he would
loathe himself—even more than he had for not protecting his
wife.

He should have enlightened Suzette about
London and about things a protected and naive country lass would
not know of. When he decided to bring her to the city, she had been
excited, wide eyed, and he did not have it in him to dampen that.
In truth, he had spun a dozen lies for Suzette about who he was and
what his background was, because he had wanted to hang onto the
purity and love she had offered.

From the moment, he had met her, an
accidental meeting on a country lane. Her angelic beauty captivated
him. Moreover, from the moment, she opened her mouth and he began
to listen, Raith knew he had never met anyone who saw so much
goodness in everything.

It hurt still. It twisted him up inside to
think of it. Of her shy wonder at his kisses, her complete
submission and trust at lovemaking—something they had not done
right after marriage, but that very night—the night before she went
missing.

If he thought of her giving herself to him
that night, rising early, likely thinking she could go to the shops
alone, as she did in her village. And…if he imagined Marcus spying
her, charming her….holding her for the time he’d searched for
her…He had gone mad. Even the worst he had imagined then was not
the worst that had happened to her.

He was insane, he was sure. The sight of her
in death had snapped that final thread inside of him that was
frayed to begin with.

When he had taken her body home to her
father, the man had wept. Raith could not. His last words to him
had been, forgive me. Because he knew, he should have never taken
her from her home and family.

What drove him, existed from those years of
boyhood, never belonging, fitting, and being loathed and invisible
to everyone. Those things the Duchess said to him….a child of
violence and rape, made him nauseous. Sick, because the father he
had so longed to notice him, was then. Moreover, death, death
seemed to curse and mark his life.

It was better to meet it, challenge the
devil, and beat him at his own game. He would get his blood
vengeance before it was said and done. Suzette’s spirit cried out
for it. When she had peace, he did not care what happened to him
afterwards.

The cheroot finished, dawn nearing, he turned
and walked toward his house. Raith inhaled the chill and night
mist, letting it cool his blood and body. Dead and cold—at home in
the dark. Yes, he had been that for a long time. It was only the
passion for Stratton’s blood that kept him alive.

Two more tasks—the fires, the grand finale of
explosions that would obliterate any trace of Marcus Stratton’s
evil enterprises. Then, he would face Stratton, kill him, make him
agonize exactly the way Suzette had. Stratton would die with
everyone knowing exactly what he was, a criminal, and a depraved
and sadistic animal, kept fed, grown, encouraged, by those who
cared nothing of what he did, so long as they served their own
ends.

Standing in his chamber later, the place
where he could absorb the bleak chill and shadows. Raith looked
around and spied the gown he had pulled out of Suzette’s small bag,
and kept tucked in the back of the wardrobe. He walked over to it
and picked it up, bringing it to his nose, breathing in, trying to
smell the long faded scent of wild flowers and sun, the scent of
her, the essence of that purity and innocence—the spirit of
everything she’d brought into his life, for so short a span.

He closed his eyes and sat on the edge of the
bed, his fists in the material whilst he lowered it and stared at
the tiny buttons.

Suzette…Suzette…Suzette...

Lying back on the bed, he held it to his
chest, the hollow in his gut matching the rift in his heart and
soul. Because she did not answer, couldn’t, the blackness seeped in
and froze there, whispering to him brutally, that he held the faded
garment of one cold in the ground.

Chapter 4

Lady Caroline looked around the bustling
street in dismay. Her hand on the hood of her blue cloak to shield
her face, and a scented hanky to her nose, she worried her lip and
wondered if Harry had given her the wrong address?

Jostled and assailed by noise and scents, she
tried to see the numbers on the doors and buildings amid the sheer
crush of traffic, peddlers, beggars, an alarming mixture of the
poor, business men, flamboyant artist and scurrying
paperboys—flower sellers, animals—everyone seeming to be calling
and yelling at the same time.

She could not distinguish which were shops,
taverns, residences, or both. Her panic was starting to get the
best of her. Already having scolded herself for sending her maid
back with the coach so that her father would not know she had gone
out. She was so out of her element though, she had no idea what to
do.

She muttered in marvel that Harriet, with her
fortune, would rather live in such a bustling part of the city
rather than Mayfair, or some superior, more spacious address. On
the other hand, Harry was nothing if not different, she doubtless
thrived on it.

About to give up, though walking the street
alone was an equally daunting prospect, Caroline sucked up her
courage and darted across the street in a lull between passing
coaches, buggies, and people. She ignored the tugs on her sleeve
and rude, rather wild-eyed people who tried to get her
attention.

Caroline stepped back to get out of the way
of a juggler who nearly knocked her over—and felt someone slam into
her back. Her oomph sound was joined by a male curse. Groping,
Caroline clutched the closest thing she could to keep from
falling—the man’s sleeve.